Every year in springtime music-bizzers — songwriters, producers, agents, players, critics, programmers, sycophants — gather in the muggy city of Austin, Texas, for South by Southwest, an industry gathering during which they booze and schmooze and take a stab at shaping the future of rock and roll. As the Nineties…
The six members of Natural Causes, their manager Keith Schantz, and a two-man photo crew are parading down the long hallway of a Lincoln Road building, toward the back, where the musicians will pose for portraiture in their rehearsal studio. A glass door swings open and Washington Square music director…
The best thing I found in the day-after-Thanksgiving shopping orgy was a whole new rendering of Messiah on CD. The concept of Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration alone was worth risking the $16 purchase price. Understand that Handel’s Messiah is special to me. I sing it every year at the…
Keeping the lines open and dialing in area codes With the three previous installments of this feature (April, June, and September) we covered 23 recordings, a mere drop in the local-sound bucket. We hope by now you have the idea — some of these are on sale, those that aren’t…
The world is too much with reference books, guides, and the like, but the two new rock-and-roll road compendiums are something new and different. Up to a point, anyway. In February of 1991 the Addison Wesley Publishing Company shipped a softcover called The Jazz and Blues Lover’s Guide to the…
Hey, hit the highway. Get outta town. Life is a field trip. The adventure never ends. On the road. Again. And there exist a thousand other buzz phrases mating trips (sans drugs) with rock music. I remember a few years ago, cruising up the New Jersey Turnpike about 10:00 at…
I don’t know about the future, but rock and roll died Tuesday night at the Miami Arena. It was not pretty. What’s worse, it wasn’t ugly either. I literally couldn’t even get arrested. I also couldn’t believe that I was seeing rock and roll die in my lifetime and in…
It’s 1:30 p.m. on a typical weekday afternoon. The phone rings. I shove breakfast aside and pick up the receiver. “Hullo.” “Hey, Todd. Michael Bolton here.” Right. The preeningest poseur of ’em all, the consummate, definitive white opportunist making a fortune by neutering, bastardizing, aping, and otherwise exploiting classic African-American…
A little more than a decade and a half ago, when Warren Zevon was the Excitable Boy, talking a great game, playing with guns, and out-drinking anyone foolish or self-destructive enough to challenge his virtuosity with a bottle, you could’ve gotten great odds he wouldn’t survive long enough to see…
These days it seems as if every time you go to the radio, there’s another classic of rock integrity being sacrificed before the almighty dollar — “Like a Rock” hawking pickups, “Instant Karma” moving shoes, even the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” a defining garage moment from…
Seems like only yesterday the Goods were “the best live band in Miami.” Blowing everybody away at Miami Rocks, tearing up Churchill’s. “If only they could get it on tape…” was the rap against them. Then came 1990’s Too True to Be Good vinyl EP and the single “I’m Not…
I joined the Grave Dancers Union I had to file — Soul Asylum (on their debut album for Columbiaafter leaving A&M and Twin/Tone) The first, and perhaps only, lesson for struggling musicians is that there is no success other than the success that comes with a contract. The major label…
Mirrors reflect the one-dimensional image given and give it back. Hard rockers Alice in Chains take their fans beyond the looking glass and into the bloody guts of their music, where they explore the darkest sides of emotion and drug abuse — more like looking at the mirror from the…
What’s so beastly about the Beastie Boys? Flavor. F-L-A-V-O-R. That is, full-fledged, long-lasting, ass-kicking, veracity-dropping oomph and rev. Or something like that. In other words, the Beastie Boys possess the secrets of street science, the poetics of po-mo pop irreverence, the craftiness of a caravan of seasoned carnies, and the…
Wearing a hot-red clown wig, white jacket with silver and gold sequins, a rainbow of scarves, and a bow tie, Captain Bill recalls the Ziggy Stardust era of Bowie as he rocks this house. The punk aesthete renewed, the savagery of live-music showmanship pushing the envelope and cutting the edge,…
They didn’t ask to be born the sons of famous musicians. They didn’t plan, either, to be nursed on the music of the Sixties and Seventies. The members of Bloodline, a blues-based rock band, will tell you they’re not a novelty act basking in the fame of daddy’s name, but…
They said, “You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are.” The man replied, “Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar.” (from The Man with the Blue Guitar by Wallace Stevens) Chris Smither was not the first guitarist moved by Wallace Stevens’s poem,…
We’ve been playing telephone tag with Gen, lead singer and ringmistress of the Orlando-based, hard-core band-cum-traveling S&M shockfest known as the Genitorturers. We’re expecting the voice on the other end of the line — once we finally make contact — to snarl and spit venom. The GTs are, after all,…
As editor of this section I felt it was not only my right, but my duty, to recommend which candidate you should vote for in the presidential election. Unlike the Miami Herald, where a former publisher once forced the editorial board to change its recommendation, this rag is a bit…
What becomes a legend most? Folk rock. Aaargh! An overloaded term that would make any self-respecting, post-Boom techno kid reach for his or her remote. Zap — outta here. And flower power? Come on, you simply must be kidding. Was there ever really such a thing? I mean, the media,…
Superstar Chet Atkins, of all people, doesn’t quite get it. Asked about a specific technique on a particular song, he mumbles that he barely even remembers the tune. Reminded of his profoundly significant encounter with drummer Herbie Cooper, he shoots back as to how ol’ Herbie’s doing these days. Prodded…
Was there ever a tag more damning in the history of rock than that of “new Dylan”? What songwriter in his or her right mind would want to be saddled with such a burden? Better to ditch the music career on the spot and start thinking about that Sally Struthers…
